Planning for Climate Change. First in a series

I’ve been saying for quite some time now that “global warming is about more energy in weather systems”. But what does that mean from a practical perspective? In short, it means that we can expect our weather to intensify. Temperature swings will become more extreme and storms will become more intense as global average temps rise. Here then is the first of a series of posts that just might help you to prepare for this.

Do you own a standby generator? If you do, that’s a great first step, but that step alone won’t help you to keep warm if you lose power in the winter. There’s a simple solution to this however! Your natural gas furnace only draws about 900 watts peak and that’s easily handled by most backup generators. But how can you connect it safely and legally? The answer is also simple: convert it to a corded appliance. Now, when grid power is unavailable, you can unplug your furnace from the wall outlet and plug it into your backup generator.

Here’s an article that shows how to inexpensively DIY the conversion. I did ours over the weekend.